Archive for the ‘Places’ Category

Whanau and friends…and a dead calf

Friday, February 22nd, 2013

A wonderful evening with three generations of family from four countries plus our neighbours. Wine, coffees, chippies and chocolate under the stars whilst we chatted and laughed the evening away.

We could have stayed around the table on the deck forever, underneath a three-quarter moon and stars – except a stench that has wafted over our place intermittently over the last 36 hours returned with a vengeance.  

As the assembled whanau reeled from the stink, I grabbed a hunting lamp and headed off for to track down the source but a quick search of our place revealed nothing.  My mate Johnny jumped the fence ahead of me and a wander around the adjacent farm revealed a dead and decomposing calf in a tomo* in the paddock nearest our house. 

We’re off to the Helensville Agricultural & Pastoral Show tomorrow but I suspect the afternoon will involve a call to the farmer (away on holiday) and a session with a digger to bury the calf/fill the hole.

*Tomo is Maori for hole or small cave. These are usually formed by underground streams eating away at the dirt above until the top caves in.

At the going down of the sun

Sunday, November 11th, 2012

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They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning,
We will remember them.

Laurence Binyon ~ For The Fallen

First born

Saturday, November 10th, 2012

It’s a beautiful Saturday morning here in Aotearoa. Birds sing and flutter under powder blue skies and scattered puffs of cloud, our animals graze contentedly and the cats and dog lounge in the sun.  This week has been a landmark week for us, with the very first birth of an animal on the smallholding since we moved in.

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I arrived home on Tuesday to much excitement in the household and the news that our Dorper ewe was having contractions.  Wendy and the girls mounted watch from our bedroom and the deck overlooking the home paddock.  As the light faded and night fell, I ventured into the paddock with a lamp to check the ewe. After managing to get in the right position, I could see the lamb’s head appearing but with no front legs showing, I was concerned that things might get complicated. After phoning for advice we continued to watch & wait and, twenty minutes later, the ewe dropped her small lamb just as my farmer mate Johnny turned up to provide guidance.

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Having been born a little premature and with a swollen tongue from the birth, the lamb was struggling to breath and made no effort to stand up.  The ewe began kicking it quite violently (to encourage it to move and stand), so we decided to remove it from the paddock briefly and help it catch its breath and find its feet.

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Surrounded by the family and Alex the WWOOFer, the lamb slowly picked up. After much oohing and aahing and drinking of red wine (well, one needs to celebrate such things, right), we took the lamb back to the paddock and, after a cautious attempts, successfully reintroduced it to the ewe. 

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Since then, Arthur (so named for Wendy’s Dad as the lamb was born on his 92nd birthday) has progressed nicely, feeds well and is great fun to watch.

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From my limited experience, the ewe and ram seem to be attentive, protective and nurturing parents and together they make a handsome threesome.  I pulled the lamb away this morning to check a weeping eye and Robyn grabbed a few quick shots before we treated it and put it back.

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Once again, I am thankful that we’re blessed by the experiences we have and the wonders we witness around us in this beautiful place.

Dad, daughter and DIY

Saturday, October 6th, 2012

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What better way to start the day than a full farmhouse breakfast with eggs fresh from the chook house made by your daughter?  With an early season strawberry for a nose and a perky porky bacon smile, how could this fail to set me up for the day?

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Breakfast over, my penultimate day of annual leave with the family began with a run to the nearest mall for the girls and a trip to the farm store timber yard and hardware store for me.

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Back at the farm, the first job was to predator-proof the main window of the chook house. With all manner of local foraging fauna around and recent evidence of rats eating eggs, keeping them out of the almost-finished chook house is a must.  To be on the safe side and though we’ve seen few other signs, I have also laid some poisoned bait stations to try and reduce the pest around here.

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Next on the list was replacing the rusted-through hinges with new galvanised ones and rehanging the door.  As is often the case, the spring weather has brought intermittent showers, so I have been alternating between outside jobs and indoor tasks as the rain comes and goes.

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One result of working like this is the mess that comes from chucking stuff undercover and hauling it out again once the shower has passed. The basement store rapidly became untidy, especially in the feed store area close to the door so, while the rain came down outside, I knocked up a platform to keep the feed off the floor and dry.

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During the afternoon, a big white power company ute rolled up and out jumped a very jolly and pleasant Filipino linesman who came to check the transformer on our property and survey the power lines all the way up to the top of the hill. 

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We compared his English to my Tagalog and decided his language skills were far superior and had a nice chat before he carefully scaled the electric fence and marched up the hill onto the neighbouring farm.

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Having previously done all the major chook house stuff, the last couple of days have been spent finishing off the detailed stuff outside and in – like the access shutter to one bank of nesting boxes…

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…and the sliding storm shutter for the rear window.

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Part of the joy of doing this stuff is spending time with Maisie, who is almost always willing to lend a hand and learn new skills. Today, using the one I had already made as a template, Maisie had me to cut the treated timber to size with our new circular saw and set about assembling a second bank of nesting boxes.

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Maisie did a fantastic job, checking measurements, making suggestions and showing good control of the cordless drill while screwing the pieces together. Her great grandmother had great carpentry skills and I’m sure she’d be chuffed to see Maisie developing those same skills.  After installing the nesting box, we hung the water dispenser, tidied up and headed up to the house for a cup of tea.

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As a treat for putting up with me all week and being such a great helper around the farm, we ducked into the local Farmland cooperative store to get her some coveralls  to keep her clean while working with the stock in the paddocks.  Much to her delight, they stock a great line in Kiwi-made fabulous fuscia coveralls and she’s now dressed to tackle any job around the farm.

Home to roost

Thursday, October 4th, 2012

There is nothing like having a good mate…other than having a good mate with a bloody big tractor!  Johnny turned up at our place around lunchtime and, for the price of a couple of filled rolls and a cup of tea, he helped us get the Palais de Poulet from the driveway into its intended position in the home paddock.

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Having stropped and chained the shed onto the forks for stability and safety, Johnny negotiated the gateway with barely a millimetre between the tractor tyres and the posts either side.

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Johnny then drove around the tree and shelter in the centre of the paddock to get in line with where our original chicken coop had sat in the lee of the shelter belt planting.

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One of the joys of doing a job with Johnny is the banter and the laughs we have as we’re working. Our first attempt to site the shed square and level on the sloping paddock didn’t work out. As we stood back to reassess our approach, Johnny smirked and said ‘That the thing about working with me…you need patience as it takes at least two goes for me to get something done!’  

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As it turned out, third time’s a charm and, after employing some Kiwi ingenuity and a bit of trial and error, we had the shed sitting level and stable, just where it needed to be.

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After another well-earned cup of tea and a few chocolate biscuits, Johnny trundled off to swap his tractor for his digger to help out an old joker he knows down the road.

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I enlisted Maisie in helping me repair and generally tidying up the shed. After that, we relocated the base I made for the original chicken coop she and I built a few months back and added a new floor to keep out the rats that we suspect are responsible for eating some eggs recently.  With that done, all that remained was for us to relocate the waratah and chicken wire fence to enclose the smaller of the coops.  

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In the next few days, I will hopefully be able to fit out the new coop with the nesting boxes and perches required to turn it into a Palais de Poulet fit for our free-ranging mature hens and rooster.  This will leave the smaller fenced coop free for our ‘teenager’ hens to start spreading the wings and preparing fro free-range life, in turn making room in our nursery coop/run for our three week old chicks.

All in all, it was a great day, working and spending time together with family and friends on jobs that enrich the farm and our lives at the same time.

Henhouse and heritage

Tuesday, October 2nd, 2012

Although I’m on leave this week, there is a lot that needs doing around the place. Guilt and the stern gaze of SWMBO has so far prevented me from just loafing on the couch with a book and I have been gainfully employed each day working through the ‘Honey, do!’ list.

As mentioned last week, Wendy bought a well worn but sound homemade shed from a guy at the other end of the district.  Although well built from treated timber, having seen action first as a playhouse for his kids and then a mansion for their rabbits, it has seen better days.

After a morning spent ferrying the womenfolk around the shops of West Auckland, this afternoon was ear-marked for cleaning up the shed. After the best part of three hours with a Karcher pressure washer, the Palais de Poulet stood gleaming in the afternoon sun and I was encrusted in all manner of filth I’d rather not think about.

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Le Palais de Poulet –  before

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Le Palais de Poulet –  after

Hopefully, the weather will hold and I can do a few repairs and set about converting it into Wendy’s dream chook house.  I’ll also need to give some serious consideration to how I’m to get it over the fence and into position in the home paddock – I suspect I shall need to call upon the services of Johnny and his tractor.

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As I have already said, I was also keen to do more reading this week. Long weekdays in the office interspersed with evenings and weekends doing stuff around the farm have meant I’m barely able to get a page read before my eyelids close. As usual, I have a few books on the go on my Kindle but fancied tucking into a book for my week off – which was just as well as when I popped over to see my friend and neighbour Johnny last week, he handed me two books he had borrowed from his Dad.  Coming from a family that have farmed here for years and knowing that I was interested in leaning more about local history, he had picked them up for me when seeing his folks. 

The one I’m reading at the moment is a first edition copy of ‘Men Came Voyaging’, a detailed history of the town of Helensville (which celebrates its 150th year this year) and the surrounding area including where we live. It was written by Colleen M. Sheffield, a local resident and talented Maori writer who lost her life in a tragic bus accident on Brynderwyn Hill on Waitangi Day in 1963.

Written in celebration of Helensville’s centennial year, the book was the culmination of extensive and painstaking research by Sheffield. It covers the entire history of the district—the formation of the earliest forests and sandhills, the complicated Maori history and the changes brought by the Pakeha settlers. I was intrigued to learn that, depending on your theological / evolutionary outlook, the hillside upon which we now live is actually a silted-up sea cliff dating from the Pleistocene period one million years ago.

While sometimes hard to follow, the chapters on Maori settlement were enlightening, detailing the travels and land struggles between Ngapuhi and Ngati Whatua iwi.  Our home is between two of the southern most Ngati Whatua marae (meeting area) at Haranui and Rewiti on the side of Tauwhare Maunga (mountain).

I’m looking forward to the coming chapters and learning more about this beautiful valley that we live in.

Spring has sprung

Saturday, September 29th, 2012

Today was that rare kind of day where the weather was great, the family were all at home and none of us had major plans – which turned our to be just as well.

Regular readers will recall my recent attempt to take a week’s annual leave was taken up with being ill and instead taking the time as sick leave. Undaunted, I have booked next week as annual leave in the hope that I can rest, relax and enjoy the time off without writhing around in bed and spending inordinate amounts of time in the smallest room.

I use the term ‘rest, relax and enjoy’ broadly because this morning She Who Must Be Obeyed declared that today was to be a day of toil rather than a day of rest.  So ordered, we all set to and did a whole bunch of stuff around the farm, which included all of the following and more.

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Last night, we took delivery of a well worn but sound kid’s playhouse that Wendy bought on TradeMe. First job this morning was to size up the job of cleaning it up and converting it into what I shall be calling The Poulet Palace. With our rapidly-growing Brown Shaver chicks and Sussex and Leghorn ‘teenagers’  joining our four original chickens, including Cilla Black below, we’ll be needing more space soon.

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We have been trying to prune back the rampant bougainvillea and creeper that has threatened to completely take of the deck and terrace railings. The first task of the day was to finish the job and haul the cuttings to the middle paddock to help make up a bonfire for later in the spring.

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Meanwhile in the kitchen garden,  as you can see from the photo of Maisie below, the raised veggie patch had run wild since the autumn and was a mass of out of control herbs and overgrown veggies.

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Maisie and Robyn started the mammoth task without a second thought, gathering tools and digging over the patch like seasoned agricultural labourers…

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…forking the earth, loosening roots and pulling up heaps of spuds, kumara and spring onions.

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The veggie patch wasn’t the only thing that was overgrown; our rosemary bush (left below) has spread out to cover an area about 8 feet in diameter, so Wendy and Casia did some aggressive cutting back, calling me and my trusty chainsaw in to deal to the bits too thick for shears.

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With chopped greenery, gone-to-seed veggies and dead wood piling up all around, the ride-on and trailer were pressed into service throughout the day, hauling stuff either to the bonfire pile or our organic dumping spot near the gully in the back paddock.  The numerous trips afforded the three girls plenty of opportunity to hone their driving and trailer-backing skills, as can be seen in the following pictures.

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Driving Miss Maisie

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Flat Out

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That Way Inclined

Freed from her paddock for the afternoon, our little heifer TJ enjoyed munching her way round the back garden and teasing the very interested bulls in the next paddock before lying down for a siesta in the sun.

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Seeing as the animals were taking it easy, we thought it was time for a break and Maisie outdid herself laying on iced water and biscuits for the workers…

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and Robyn, rocking gently in her chair, decided to copy TJ and have a lie-down!

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Slowly, the sun was more and more obscured by dark clouds that threatened to bring the forecast rain and put an end to a busy day full of fun, laughter  and quite a bit of hard yakka.

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As we went around tidying up and putting tools away, it was good to see the results of our efforts.

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The soil in our raised veggie patch was visible for the first time since we moved onto the farm.

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The three stands of bamboo that smothered the back wall of the house were gone.

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Our first crop, albeit an inadvertent one, was harvested, washed and gifted to our friends and neighbours.

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Our ‘teenager’ chickens and their temporary dwelling were relocated to a sunnier spot.

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Rampant rosemary was reduced and harvested for use in the kitchen and, in another of Wendy’s schemes, packing in cellophane for sale in the local veggie store.

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Heading for the house and a hot shower, I took one last look across the farm, beyond the bonfire pile and over the valley and thanked God for the blessing of living in such a place. I look forward to hopefully many days such as this in the future.

Relief beef

Friday, September 14th, 2012

No sooner were the chicks installed in the laundry than we got a call from Johnny. Apparently he’d arrived home late this afternoon to find our new calf waiting in the yard so he was loading her to bring over to our place.

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A little while later, the rumble of a farm bike and the rattle of a trailer heralded the young heifer’s arrival.  Immediately, we could see how bright, lively, inquisitive and nervous this little Jersey/Fresian cross was – a very different story from poor Willow. 

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We had only just got her coat on and moved her into the paddock when Maisie and Robyn came home from school.  As they came up the drive, we could see their faces light up. After lightening quick change from school uniform, they joined us in the paddock and had the honour of giving the calf her first bottle feed.

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At some point during the feeding, the calf was named TJ – the initials of Maisie’s last and much-loved primary school teacher who recently died of cancer. 

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TJ quickly drank the two litres of milk and began the tentative process of getting acquainted with Poppy the lamb and the chooks with whom she’ll be sharing the home paddock for the next while.

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So, as of this evening, our growing livestock register stands at:

  • One lamb
  • One heifer
  • One rooster
  • Three laying chickens
  • Five day-old chicks

We’ve been considering at least one more lamb and really, around here, who knows what tomorrow will bring or when we’ll gifted another blessing to steward?

And on the seventh day…

Friday, September 14th, 2012

… he rose from his sick bed and felt somewhat human again. I had such great plans. Booking 5 days’ leave sandwiched between two weekends meant nine consecutive days away from work and busy getting stuff done around the smallholding. Or not, as it has turned out.

Sadly, out of the last 10 days, I have spent the best part of seven of them in bed, on the loo or lying on the couch thinking about going to the loo or back to bed. After a visit to the doctor and some tests, it turns out that I have had concurrent campylobacter and rotavirus infections, the same stuff that killed Willow. 

With just two more days before I have to go back to work, today was the first day when I actually felt like doing anything like tackling some of the jobs around the place. So, while Wendy tackled the wildly overgrown shrubbery…

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…I slowly but surely worked my way down the drive, regrading and redistributing the metal by hand to even out the surface and smooth things as much as possible.

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I have lost a bit of weight in the last week but I hadn’t realised how much the dehydration and lack of food had taken it out of me.  Just raking and smoothing 150m of drive almost did for me so I finished off and headed back to the house to enjoy a few minutes sitting with Wendy, drinking tea and enjoying the view.

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We are still bottle-feeding Poppy the lamb but she is supplementing this more and more by grazing in the home paddock.  That said, one lamb – even a guzzler like Poppy – isn’t enough to keep pace with the Spring growth.In order to keep the grass in good order and deal to any weeds before they reproducing, I spent a pleasantly sunny hour topping the paddock.

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After a quick sandwich for afternoon tea, for lunchtime had come and gone without either of us noticing, we headed to the local rural primary school to collect the newest additions to our small holding.

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We had ordered five Brown Shaver chicks through our friend Michelle (Johnny’s wife) who works at the school.  One of the mums had placed a bulk order for local kids and parents, sourcing the chicks from the country’s major producer in Christchurch.  

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As part of a much larger consignment, the days-old chicks were flown up this afternoon, collected from another farm and driven to the school in a heated box. From there, we whisked them home to take up residence in a lamp-heated cat cage in our laundry, ending their 1,000km journey with munch of Peck n Lay and water.

Funnily enough, these little squeaking bundles of fluff were not to be the newest additions for very long.  Just as we were cooking dinner and getting ready to take the youth group to an indoor climbing centre for the evening, we got a call from Johnny telling us to get ready for another arrival.

A battle lost

Monday, September 10th, 2012

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We had our first loss on the smallholding earlier today when our calf Willow finally succumbed to the infection she has been fighting for 9 days.  Speaking to our vet this afternoon, rotavirus is the most likely culprit.  He says that it is currently prevalent in the area and many folk are seeing losses amongst newborn calves.

Willow seemed jaded the day we unloaded her from the trailer, so she was most likely already infected and we’ve been fighting an uphill battle since then. For a week now, we have been tube feeding several times a day, alternating between calf milk and electrolytes in an effort to keep her hydration and nourishment up.  Latterly, we have also been administering injections of antibiotics, penicillin and pain killers to get the virus under control and keep her comfortable.

Wendy and Maisie have been the mainstays of the care effort, demonstrating veterinary care skills that belie their relative inexperience with such things. It has been a sad but salutory experience for us all, forcing us to fast-track our ‘on the job’ learning about general animal welfare and hygiene regimens, as well as more specific stuff like giving subcutaneous injections to cows.  

Before sunrise one morning last week, I carried Willow to the shed in the back paddock to get her out of the storm that was blowing through. As I did, it dawned on me that this was something that people have been doing since they first domesticated animals and I more fully appreciated the privilege and responsibilities that come with stewardship.

It feels like we have a lot to learn, though are told that we did everything right and the battle may have been lost before it began. Undoubtedly more calves will follow but we’ll always regret losing our first so quickly.

Ironically, it may well be rotavirus (or a campylobactor infection) that has kept me in bed or the bathroom since last Wednesday. Hopefully, the meds and the electrolytes will kick in soon – especially as I’m meant to be enjoying a week’s leave starting today.  

To end on a brighter note, we have new tenants –  a nice couple who moved into the cottage last Friday and are slowly settling in.